The present invention relates to a method and apparatus in a plant including at least two insertion machines, for coordinating product streams from the machines, the streams in turn having been branched off from a stream of newspapers coming from a newspaper printing press, to a single stream of newspapers having the same speed as the one coming from the press.
In daily newspaper printing houses, it is becoming routine to insert preprinted supplements or advertising materials into the newspaper for distribution in conjunction with delivery of the newspapers. Insertion machines are used for this purpose. The insertion machines are designed such that the printed material can be placed between the pages of the ordinary newspaper. The disadvantage with presently available insertion machines is that their capacity is considerably less than the capacity of newspaper printing presses. This means that several insertion machines must be used in parallel to obtain a production rate which is as large as that of the newspaper press in order not to increase production times. Also conventionally a flow of collated products is obtained from each of the insertion machines, and each machine requires its own stacking and bundling line. As a result a large space and extra personnel are required.